The US embassy also helps arrange counseling sessions for aspiring students in India on a large scale. They have even started setting up video discussions with YouTube influencers to help create a rosy picture.

This is what everyone knows but we will cover the other and ugly side of US F1 visa to green card specifically for Indian students.

It’s not an easy path.

#1 Leave US after F1 Study Completion

First and foremost, the F1 visa does not allow immigration intent; meaning that you cannot plan to stay in the US once your studies are complete.

As per law, your intentions should be to study and leave.

The contradiction is that US immigration law does allow you to apply for a work visa like H1B once you have completed your studies.

Most people do it but you can’t plan for it at the time of F1 application.

Even if you wish for it in your dreams to get a job (via work visa) in the US after your studies, do not share this dream with the visa officer.

If the visa officer can gauge your plan to work and stay back in America, they will deny your F1 citing your intentions. This is called 214b denial.

If you made it to the US, congratulations. Now, is the time to think of the next step i.e. how to pay back the education loan.

Of course, you will need to get a decent job based on your talent and skills.

But, wait, skills and education are secondary. The first step is to find an employer and then pray for good luck in the H1B lottery.

#2 Getting H1B work permit

H1B work visa is one of the limited options to work in the US in the skilled category.

It is the subject of political debate in every presidential election as one side claims that H1B workers are low-skilled and take away American jobs.

That’s why they have only 85k H1B visas for a full year. Since that’s the only realistic way of getting a job in the USA, it is oversubscribed every year by over 400%.

To select the winners, they run a random lottery to select applications. Note, that no interview, education, or skills are counted while running this lottery.

Your chances of getting selected are purely random and if you are that one lucky Indian, the race to the next step will start.

The H1B work permit is temporary and is only for a maximum term of 6 years.

If you want to stay in the US beyond 6 years, you should get a green card (permanent residence).

Made it to this point? Good. Now starts the real professional World Cup cricket match.

#3 Join Green Card for Indian – 200-year wait

Yes, you read it right. Not 10, 100; 200 years is the estimate today.

You can get an estimate for yourself by entering a tentative date that you expect to start your green card process as the priority date in this app. It will give you an estimated date of when you can expect your green card.

The fact is that as an Indian, you will never get a US green card in this lifetime if you join the employment-based green card queue today.

Don’t just believe my words, follow the research papers published by CATO Institute. They estimate that 95% of Indians will die before they get to see their green card.

There are of course exceptions and different paths to a USA green card and I am sharing them here for the sake of balancing the argument.

Exceptions for an Indian to get a Green Card

• Marry a US citizen (1-2 year wait)
  • Leave your girlfriend in India. Don’t make any promises to get married!
  • Make a US citizen friend if you plan to get married. That’s the easiest path.
• Marry a Non-Indian, Non-Chinese, Non-Philipines (2-5 year wait)
  • Marry someone from a country whose Green card queue is not backlogged and you will be counted in that queue.
• US citizen kid (21+ year wait)
  • Have a kid in the US so that they can sponsor your GC when they turn 21.
  • Yes, they can sponsor you (as a parent of a US citizen) in the family category.
• EB1 queue (2-10+ year wait, slowing and will keep slowing every passing day)
  • This is normally called the Einstein queue but with the exception of EB1C.
  • EB1C is for international managers who are considered equivalent to Olympic players or Einstein.
  • To get into this queue, which is a little faster than other queues (EB2 and EB3), you should work outside the USA (like India) as an executive manager for at least 1 year.
  • This queue is also filling faster and wait times are increasing every year just because every other queue is extremely backlogged.
• EB5 Investment queue (2-7+ year wait, slowing and will keep slowing every passing day)
  • This queue is backlogged by 6 years for Indians.
  • The funds for EB5 investment should be legally earned.
  • It’s growing too and many are demotivated to invest 800k and then wait for 5 years to see the green card.

Do you know of more exceptions? Do share them in the comments and we will add them here.

We are making an effort to inform Indian students of their future. No one in India tells them the real story.

Until universities and businesses get affected, they won’t lobby for changing the law and Indians will keep suffering.

FAQ

Have questions and doubts about how to plan a US green card through an F1 visa?

Ask in the comments and we will answer to the best of our knowledge.

The post Indian F1 student’s Path to US green card is 200+ years. Rebirth Required! appeared first on AM22Tech.

His answers shocked me and told the true story behind the hype created by online Instagram reels.

In a nutshell, it is extremely difficult to make any meaningful revenue from YouTube Ads, Instagram sponsorships, or Twitter revenue unless you have followers in millions.

As per my understanding after talking to multiple people working hard to create online content, most of the time, they only get paid in a barter system.

A barter system means that a company will send their product as a gift, which they would expect you to promote on their channel.

In the case of the restaurant business, they will probably invite you for a free lunch and expect you to post their reels or YouTube shorts.

Social Media Career

Effort Required: HIGH

It requires a lot of effort and continuous work to find that one reel or video that goes viral.

Ravi believes that your chances of making a decent living are much better in a regular profession like a Doctor, IAS, Engineer, or a job in a Western country than in a content creation field.

There’s competition, and staying relevant means constant adaptation to trends and algorithms. The social media companies are always trying to maximize their profits by selling ads. Hence, they also look for trends or to so, create trends every day to increase engagement.

They play with user’s sentiments and that’s why you may see an extremely silly thing that is irrelevant but would be topping the trend charts.

Most content creators follow these trends and create a reel or a short by copying the trending reel. You will also notice that most trending tweets will also be copied and pasted.

Education and Skills:

If you are trying to create content within your education or a professional niche, then you have an edge.

It will be easier for you to attract followers with your knowledge in your specific field compared to non-experts.

Social media works best and pays better if you have built your brand as people are more interested in “How you did it” rather than just saying “How to do it”.

If people relate to your experience and your style of conveying things, they will follow you.

With easy access to video content creation and easy copy and paste of other content, it has become a forest out there on each media platform. That is why you see accounts looking for fresh content ideas every day to compete with others.

How Social Media Influencers Make Money?

#1 ADS

The easiest and quickest way is the ads that run on your website, YouTube video page, Twitter feed, or Instagram reels.

Please note that ads make you the least amount of money.

YouTube is known to share about 55% of ad revenue with its content creators.

#2 Sponsorships

The most money is made by influencers when they sign a one-to-one deal with brands for promotion.

That’s what you get to hear from major players who have followers of millions and are paid directly by big advertisers to promote their products.

They can then sell their services to a wider audience and may gain sponsorship deals from companies that are targeting the audience in this area.

In many cases, the direct sponsorship deals offer a cut on the revenue gained through their followers too. But, these may be reserved for very strong and big influencers like the best of the best.

#3 Selling Education Courses or Products

Many big influencers create their product lines to diversify their earnings once they have reached the top of earnings from ads and sponsorships.

The small ones may not be able to reach this level easily.

The post How Much Money Can You Earn with Content Creation Online Compared to Doctor, Engineer or Job in USA? appeared first on AM22Tech.

Congressmen Raja Krishnamoorthi and Larry Bucshon have sent a letter signed by a total of 56 representatives to help skilled immigrants waiting in lifelong backlogs.

The letter simply requests Biden and DHS/USCIS to make all dates in the “Date of Filing” chart for employment-based Green cards “Current” including India.

‘Current’ means that you will be allowed to file the i485 adjustment of status in addition to EAD and AP.

The last time this miracle happened was in July 2007.

What Happened in 2007?

All employment-based final action dates were made current in July 2007 including India.

Attorney Cyrus Mehta had written about the July 2007 visa bulletin action and its legality at that time.

It was believed that President George W. Bush, used his executive action and now the House representatives are asking Biden to repeat the same.

Chances of making Dates Current in Oct 2023?

I am positive but still think that chances are 50% as employment-based skilled workers are usually not a priority unless businesses lobby for them.

The chances are fair given the fact the same is being done for family-based green card applicants.

I am hopeful that this can be done if Biden can show the same courage as he has shown in allowing EAD and AP for family-based immigrants.

The US government must also be keeping in mind Canada’s ambitions to attract highly skilled workers by giving them open work permits and a clear pathway to permanent residency.

A big round of applause to House representatives and ImmigrationVoice for their work on pushing for making the dates current in the Oct 2023 visa bulletin. I hope it happens.

Biden Allowing Family-Based GC to Get EAD/AP Starting Aug 2023

If you do not know by now, the Biden administration announced on July 7, 2023, that they will allow family-based green card applicants from multiple Latin American countries (India excluded) to enter the USA on Advance parole even if their dates are not current.

They will be able to work and stay in the US while they wait for the dates to get current in the visa bulletin. This is a big step.

As an example of ‘where there is a will, there is a way’, USCIS announced on July 28, 2023, that they will start inviting people for parole on July 31. They are showing a turnaround time of less than 30 days in this case which otherwise, is not possible without paying the extra premium processing fee mostly in employment-based cases.

Benefits of making Dates Current in the “Dates of Filing” Chart

• File i485 Adjustment of status
  • Job portability – Can change employer after 180 days and still keep the PD date.
  • No need to worry about the H1B 60-day grace period and leave the US or file another visa change of status.
• Child Age Protection
  • Non-US-born kids’ age will be locked so that they can get green cards with their parents even if they turn 21.
  • CSPA Age Calculator
• Green card EAD (i765)
  • You can get a Green card EAD open work permit.
  • EAD allows you to work for any employer, and or start a business.
  • Non-US citizen kids can get SSN numbers, which helps in getting child tax credits.
• Advance Parole (i131)
  • Allows you to travel without worrying about H1B or visa stamping
  • How to apply for advance parole using form i131 easily

FAQ

Source: Congressman News Brief

The post Will All EB Dates Be Current in Oct 2023? appeared first on AM22Tech.

Canadian Open work permit essentially creates a reliable and concrete pathway to permanent residence in Canada compared to the completely unreliable US green card process.

Due to huge demand and the desperation of high-skilled #H1B visa holders waiting for more than a decade in the US, the quota of 10k spots got filled in less than 48 hours. This has sounded alarm bells in the US immigration circuits.

If Canada really wants to make a change and attract big tech businesses to Canadian soil, Sean Fraser should seriously consider offering PR directly to people who have been waiting or are joining the US green card queue.

This small survey reveals that most people will strongly consider moving to Canada as the opportunity cost to keep waiting in the US is too high.

The most affected Indian (EB1/2/3) queues are backlogged for more than 10 years and are fed up with unexpected date retrogression.

The US green card bulletin system pushes the entire responsibility of filing and waiting on the applicant even though the applicant has no power to change the bulletin dates. It is so random that it can go back in time by decades, not days, months, or years.

One day you are eligible to get a Green card, and the next day, you might be pushed back 10 years in the queue. And all of that burden to maintain mental sanity is on the applicant exclusively.

Opportunity Costs of Waiting in US

America is known as the land of opportunities; but with very high opportunity costs.

As they say, you have to lose something to gain something; this country of dreams demands a huge amount of your health, wealth, and time just to get through its legal immigration system.

People whose wishlist is to see the adorable green card in their lifetime will know what they have sacrificed to keep themselves in the queue.

• It does not cost $5000 to apply for your green card, it costs your mental health.
• It does not cost the usual processing time, it costs your life years waiting to see the application result.
• It does not cost $10k in lost salary due to visa restriction, it costs your career growth.

Think in terms of lost opportunity just because of the visa or green card system and you realize that the cost is too high.

Most people go through extreme stress each month at the time of the most popular visa bulletin issuance.

Visa Date Retrogression technology

I am sure the daily dining table discussion is more about date retrogression, which by the way is patented US immigration technology. No other country has or will ever use this extremely rare patented tech designed specifically for people who have US dreams.

This special tech has the real capabilities to take you ‘back to the future’. Yes, you read it right.
If you can’t imagine or have never experienced it, the only way is to apply for US green card.

The likes of AI (Artificial Intelligence), chatGPT, and Google Bard are kiddish in front of this retrogression tech. The US has saved the best for its best.

You can’t even imagine how many people are ready to give up to use this technology. Indians, primarily are extremely fond of it.

As per the genes, Indians are accustomed to decade-long waits in Indian court cases, but here, they have successfully upgraded to wait even centuries. An Indian has a waiting time of 150+ years but still happily waits.

He enjoys the exclusive fun of date retrogression, that nobody else in the world can experience; not even in Disney parks.

This tech has so many useful features. One of them is making an attorney your half-girlfriend. They have to go through so many legal hoops on the way to a Green card that they have coffee with an Attorney almost every week.

Legal hoops? What do you mean? David Bier from the Cato Institute tried to make a chart and was successful

The system will not change until the market forces force it. It will stay complacent as it has nothing to lose.

They receive the full fee for one EB queue, juggle the visa dates using the patented retrogression tech, forcing applicants to file another redundant application in another queue (again with full fee), and then ask them to wait for eternity.

It’s good that Canada has taken the step of giving work permits. It should shake something.

Raj Karnatak, a long-time proponent of US immigration reform lists various things that the US might lose. Of course, there will be people who will say this is a drop in the ocean, but, it can certainly start the process of brain drain and will eventually make a big dent.

Canadian Opportunity

Many people have questions related to how will the Canadian system help get them the same or similar pay scale job in Canada.

Well, I do not have the answer to it but since the US immigration does not care to make any reforms for skilled immigrants, you have no other option either.

Ask yourself, what if you have no other way to get a green card than just keep waiting in the EB queues?

• Will the job exist 10 years from now that’s the basis of your US i140?
• What if AI completely eats up your job and then your GC is denied after a decade?

But, one thing I know is businesses are quick to adapt to the situation and move jobs where the talent is.

Not all jobs may move to Canada with the people but many will. That’s how the system works. As a matter of fact, many companies like Syndesus specifically serve this purpose. They move the person physically to Canada when the real employer is based in the US.

This helps Canada in the sense that it gets to keep the income tax in Canada and a possibility of completely moving the job and dependent occupations there in the future.

Canada is marketing itself as the near-shore option to the USA. It’s an opportunity for people who would love to stay in a developed nation within North America and still do not miss the career opportunities.

US Family GC applicants allowed EAD and Parole

The US immigration system has recently made changes to allow family-based green card applicants to get EAD and parole to enter and live in the US until their GC application is pending. They could have done the same for employment-based people who are waiting in backlogs but chose to ignore once again.

The post Can Canada turn tables by Giving PR based on US-approved i140 to backlogged Indians? appeared first on AM22Tech.